Fun Trip to Atlantic City – Part 3

Back home after a relaxing Florida beach vacation, I continue the story of my first totally recreational-only casino trip. And once again, as I found when I was writing about this earlier, I realize that I’m constantly using frugal tips that I picked up during the many years of advantage video poker play.

One of my top recommendations for any casino player of any game is to constantly look for promotions. Especially strong ones are often bonuses for joining the players club and we found two very good ones on this Atlantic City trip. Both the Hard Rock and Oceans gave us each $25 in free play just for signing up. We had to run the $100 through a machine once, but whatever we won after that was free money we could add to our shared bankroll.

A couple of caveats about this kind of promotion. It’s for new members only, although some casinos clean out their member lists after some years and you may be eligible if you hadn’t used the players card for long time. However, we found out that some casinos never forget you. We checked at the Tropicana for Susan, but she was still on the CZR players card list, although she hadn’t visited one of their properties for 10-12 years.

There could be another reason why you wouldn’t take advantage of this promotion: You won’t put much play on the card that first time, but later you might want to establish yourself as a higher-level player and put in major play on your first day. However, we knew we wouldn’t be going back to either of those casinos in the future, so this was a great benefit for Susan and me.

This promotion also had an extra benefit for us. It was another way to use a popular frugal suggestion for stretching a small bankroll: find free interesting activities outside the casino. In fact, any player, no matter what their goal or bankroll size, will find leaving a noisy smoky casino environment an oft-needed mental and physical break. Susan and I wanted to sightsee the whole length of the Boardwalk anyway, so this promotion paid for our tram transportation when our feet balked at making the six-mile roundtrip trek.

I know many of you have been waiting to hear about our slot machine play. I’ve left it for last, because it probably provided more fun than any other single activity. And that surprised and puzzled me. But after analyzing my feelings, I realized that it had to do with goals. With skilled video poker play, I was enjoying it, but my goal was long-term financial profit. With slot play, my only goal was to have fun.

However, I knew that I wouldn’t be having fun very long if I lost too much money too quickly, though I didn’t have a specific loss-limit figure in mind. I also knew Susan was feeling the same way. So we each contributed $200 to our trip bankroll and added the $315 surprise free play I found in my account at the kiosk.

Then we set a new goal: to do everything to stretch that bankroll so we could have more fun time.

At first, we used the technique of doing a lot of looking around for machines that looked fun, jumping from one machine to another for short-term sessions. We concentrated on finding those with smaller top jackpots, since they generally give more frequent payouts than those with big ones. But then we ran across some “Wonder Woman” machines. I’d played them briefly a couple of times some years ago in Vegas and on hearing that catchy theme song again, I remembered they were fun machines.

Well … once we sat down and played a little, we were both hooked and didn’t want to look around for any other machines. They fit our stretch-the-bankroll goal better than any machine we could find. They had very small top jackpots compared to most other machines, just $2,000-$3,000, so they had frequent hits and bonuses. One bonus was 21 free spins and that gave us a long period of play without any additional cost. They also had a tiny minimum bet – just 50 cents. Of course, if you made bigger bets, like the top $2.50, your wins would be bigger, but your bankroll would disappear very quickly and your fun time would be shortened. Another plus on this machine was that unlike on many others, you’re eligible for the top jackpots on all bet levels.

Although we loved playing “Wonder Woman” slots, we didn’t play for extended sessions, usually about an hour, before heading out for other activities. I didn’t keep exact records this trip, but we played 8-9 sessions during the 3 days. And when on the flight back to Georgia we counted and divided the remaining bankroll, we were pleasantly surprised.  From all our gambling, including table games and slots, we found that all those hours of fun had cost us each just a smidgen over $50. We decided that was a very reasonable entertainment cost!

I want to close out this report with a mention of one of the highlights of the trip, the Frugalite get-together. The group that met us in the food court of the Tropicana wasn’t large, but represented a real cross section of our gambling friends. Some were long-time friends we ‘d previously met in person, while others were online acquaintances; some lived locally or just happened to be in A.C. on vacation; and some had made a special effort and traveled a long distance to attend.

We didn’t have any special agenda for the meeting; we just pulled our chairs close together and for over 2 hours chatted about our casino experiences. We shared past thrilling gambling moments and, of course, moaned over the recent decline of good plays. And when we finally broke up and went our separate ways, I think everyone would remember this as an enjoyable meeting of kindred souls.

Thinking about this recent happy event reminds me again about the importance of friendships. One of the most cherished benefits of Brad’s and my casino life these last 38 years has been the opportunity to make so many friends that shared our enthusiasm for being wise gamblers. We’ve met many in person, during organized get-togethers or often running across each other in a casino. However, there are hundreds more we never met in person, but who have become our Internet friends, some who have written to me that they have been following our casino life story since my first book came out in 2000. Many of these are getting old, as we are, and no longer can visit casinos, but still like to read about the frugal good ol’ days.

And recently, I’m surprised and very pleased that a new generation of casino lovers is looking for information on social media. I see gamblers of all ages enjoying my Jean Scott Facebook page. And it’s amazing how many are commenting whenever I appear in a YouTube video and then buying Huntington Press products. Yes, frugal gambling isn’t just for old folks!

Keep sending your questions. I’ll try to answer them in future posts and always feel free to post in the comment section here. I still want to hear from old friends and make new ones!